Gina Tricot Scales Online Saleswith MySQL Enterprise Edition

"MySQL Enterprise Edition enables us to expand and grow online sales in both existing and new countries while maintaining a low TCO. It is a high performance, scalable and easy to monitor database; we're extremely pleased with it."

Nicklas Griphem,Manager Server & Infrastructure, Gina Tricot

Gina Tricot is a family-owned, Swedish fashion chain that consists of over 180 stores across the following five markets: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Germany. Combined with growing online sales, the company reaches fashion-conscious women in 28 countries across Europe. In 2012, Gina Tricot reported sales of SEK 2.3 billion.

Challenges

Implement a reliable and scalable infrastructure to drive online sales both in countries with a physical presence via stores and in countries where the company sells exclusively online.

Outsource the day-to-day administration of the e-commerce system, including the databases, to a local partner while maintaining overall overview and control of the system.

Solution

Selected MySQL to power Gina Tricot's e-commerce application based on its reputation as default database for web-based transactional applications, its low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and the recommendation of the local partner in charge of the implementation.

Decided to outsource both the physical infrastructure to a public cloud services provider and the day-to-day database administration to Oracle partner Emineo in Sweden.

Implemented MySQL replication to improve performance and scalability. While the system was initially built using MySQL Community Edition, upgraded to MySQL Enterprise Edition in order to ensure better performance, reliability and security. The MySQL Enterprise Monitor visual dashboard furthermore provides the Gina Tricot IT managers with an overview of the health of the databases at any point in time.

Using the MySQL Enterprise Monitor and MySQL Query Analyzer to detect poorly performing queries and to fix both existing and potential issues before they impact the application.
Achieved objective of maintaining visibility on all key database performance indicators and control over the application while delegating the execution of the database administration tasks to a partner.